More on Global Warming…

Well. It seems the possibility of an ice free North Pole is after all remote for this year. The second article has links to various demonstrations that this isn’t in fact necessarily a record-breaker. Suffice it to say that sailing ships have a hard time getting close to the North Pole without free water, and the first circumnavigation of the Northwest Passage was in 1905. In a wooden sailboat (read the second linked article for more).

And in 1922, “In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 degrees in ice-free water”, from the U.S. Weather Bureau. This aligns with one of my arguments about scientists and their muttering about norms, although mine are mostly with psychologists and sociologists. We haven’t been around with a consistent record-keeping system to do more than guess. For all we know there was a prior society that used semi-conductors, and there was simply a cataclysm the likes of which we can’t imagine. I think it unlikely–and possible.